As you might have guessed from the title of this diary entry, I am not feeling sunshine fresh and rainbow wonderful today. In fact, I feel like crap.

My head hurts, and I feel deep down tired but not in a physical way. Just tired of my life, I suppose. I am either not sleepy, or not able to be sleepy because some deep pain keeps me awake. I can’t tell the difference.

But to be this tired without the potential outlet and comfort of sleep is a fresh and snappy form of Hell for my stupid horrible body to cook up for me.

I am getting that trapped and anxious feeling again, like nothing in my life is satisfying or even satisfactory and I can’t take any real pleasure in anything because it all bores me and frankly even disgusts me. I desperately want out, yet I lack the courage, the energy, and the money to really go do anything.

I just plain hate my life right now, my stupid fucking pointless life, where all I do is fuck around playing video games and eating poorly and chatting online and watching my days on Earth as anything but worm food slip away in complete meaninglessness, knowing full well that in theory, there is nothing truly stopping me from going out and living a more full and rich life except for my own stupid self.

But as roadblocks go, feeling a terrifying numbness inside that makes action impossible is a doozy.

I feel like I never really have any fun. My only recreation is going out to eat with my friends, and while I absolutely love those occasions because my friends are awesome and we have extremely interesting conversations about everything under the sun, there is definitely a deep part of me that want something more. Something more exciting, more adventurous, more stimulating, more fun.

There is just one problem. I am a deep down coward, terrified of life, and so no matter how badly I want to break out of my mold and do something new and find new avenues of life to explore, there is this massive weight of numbness from my relentless and desperate internal self-sedation to which I am hopelessly addicted.

It is an addicted called dysthymic depression, and let me tell you, it’s a helluva drug.

I was talking to my therapist about it last time, and I used the anology of having this great sleeping beast inside me, and living my whole life in such a way as to keep that beast asleep.

This, of course, means living very quietly, very slowly, and very cautiously. And the longer the beast sleeps, the bigger it gets, and the greater the danger should that horrible beast ever awaken. And the bigger it gets, the smaller the amount of room left in this fetid and foul cave for me.

And this obsession with keeping the beast asleep means that all the great foul monstrosity has to do is stir a little in its sleep, twitch a talon or lift its tail to fart, and I scramble to do whatever it takes to keep it asleep. I scurry deeper into the cracks in the cave and hide my head and lay very, very, very still and just hope that it goes back to sleep some time soon.

The beast is, of course, my deep deep well of depression, anxiety, anger, and so forth. Living your entire life completely dedicated to keeping all your emotions quiescent in order to avoid the bad ones is really no way to live at all, and yet I feel quite trapped in this dark cave with my horrible beast, and I don’t know the way out at all. Or at least, I don’t know a way out that I have the courage to pursue.

Perhaps instead of looking for a way out, I should be working up the nerve to deliberately wake my beast up and invite him for tea and ask him how he feels about things. “Reach out a hand to the ghost that haunts you”, as Nietzsche said. After all, he’s my beast, my ghost, when all is said and done, and as frightening as he can be, he is just another part of me, and so no matter what happens in an encounter with him, I will still be here afterwards. It can seem like our deep darkness can devour us, that the flood of emotions held back by the dam of our depressions would completely obliterate us if it was ever loosed, but it’s not true.

And this becomes clear when you realize and accept that you are all of it… the village below, the dam, the waters, and everything else. The mix can change, and taking out the dam will surely do that, but whatever is left at the end is still you. You cannot be invaded from within yourself, for you are the invader.

And it is just barely possible that all that destruction and chaos will be worth it once everything settles down and you realize just how much tension and energy went into keeping the two halves separate, and how much better you feel now that you are one whole thing.

Anyone know any dambusters?

But that is probably not the way to go. Too risky. The better, if less dramatic, alternative is probably to open the dam slowly and reduce the pressure, letting the waters flow throw channels in the village out to the sea in a slow, measured, and careful way.

And I guess that is basically what therapy does, whether it is the traditional kind, or this rather more modern variant where you spill your guts out on your blog and other people get a chance to, at least in theory, check them out, and compare them with their own.

And for the opportunity to do that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you so much, my dear readers, for keeping this outlet alive to me.

It means more to me than you will ever know.